2008 10 22 - 22:43
Feedback
After 10 meetings with Deans and Student Council representatives in Linz, Vienna and Graz, it is about time to reconciliate some of those reactions.
Overall we see constructive reactions from the side of the universities deans/management bodies (who have to support the student council elections) and on the other hand very intense and in-depth discussions of the topic e-voting by the representatives of the student councils. Often we get answers like "we don't think anything will happen, but we don't trust the system, ...".
Back in 2000 I was on the other side, when we first discussed the introduction of e-voting for the student council with the ministry. I was then a member of the management body of the student council at Vienna University of Economics, and we thought that this voting channel provided the best solution to integrate students who couldn't participate in the student council elections otherwise.
Today I'm glad that the members of the student councils are very critical about electronic voting. It allows for a debate and a discourse on a level, which I haven't seen come quite close in other projects or countries where E-Voting was discussed.
While it is not always easy to provide answers to questions which have been answered by myself long before, it is clear that this discourse is crucial for a possible success of the project. It is important to hear, to discuss and also to address the issues raised by discussants who are not as confident as I was back in 2000 and still am that electronic voting via the Internet provides a lot of chances and provides value added to democracy in the end.
For me it is clear that this will be a though job. But I think that this project and especially the discourse about it will be so important for any further progress around forms of electronic support of elections in Austria - not only on the Student Council level but also for other pressure groups, company boards or even elections to political representative bodies.
I'm proud that I can be part of this process at this early stage!
Overall we see constructive reactions from the side of the universities deans/management bodies (who have to support the student council elections) and on the other hand very intense and in-depth discussions of the topic e-voting by the representatives of the student councils. Often we get answers like "we don't think anything will happen, but we don't trust the system, ...".
Back in 2000 I was on the other side, when we first discussed the introduction of e-voting for the student council with the ministry. I was then a member of the management body of the student council at Vienna University of Economics, and we thought that this voting channel provided the best solution to integrate students who couldn't participate in the student council elections otherwise.
Today I'm glad that the members of the student councils are very critical about electronic voting. It allows for a debate and a discourse on a level, which I haven't seen come quite close in other projects or countries where E-Voting was discussed.
While it is not always easy to provide answers to questions which have been answered by myself long before, it is clear that this discourse is crucial for a possible success of the project. It is important to hear, to discuss and also to address the issues raised by discussants who are not as confident as I was back in 2000 and still am that electronic voting via the Internet provides a lot of chances and provides value added to democracy in the end.
For me it is clear that this will be a though job. But I think that this project and especially the discourse about it will be so important for any further progress around forms of electronic support of elections in Austria - not only on the Student Council level but also for other pressure groups, company boards or even elections to political representative bodies.
I'm proud that I can be part of this process at this early stage!
Category: Miscellaneous
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